The idle musings of a former military man, former computer geek, medically retired pastor and now full-time writer. Contents guaranteed to offend the politically correct and anal-retentive from time to time. My approach to life is that it should be taken with a large helping of laughter, and sufficient firepower to keep it tamed!

Thursday, February 16, 2017

A populist, authoritarian President may be the solution - or the next crisis

The game has been rigged to make reforming the system within the rules an impossibility. When a majority of the people favor a policy that the managerial class opposes, the policy gets hamstrung by the rules of the game. All of a sudden, the process is sacred. When the managerial class wants something for their masters, they change the rules so it either flies through or simply happens without anyone noticing. The process is not all that important.

All the blather about America being a nation of laws is just cover for the fact that ours is a lawless nation ruled by lawless men. An obvious example is the Ninth Circuit judges, who have fabricated a legal justification for throwing sand in the gears of a wildly popular executive order issued by President Trump. These are not men enforcing the law or respecting the laws. These are men who hold the law in contempt. All that matters to them is obedience to the weird secular cult we have come to call Progressivism.

If what it takes to break the stranglehold this cult has on society is a dictator willing to toss a few judges from a helicopter, then sign me up for dictatorship.

. . .

Totalitarians attempt to change the world and human nature, by controlling all aspects of society, including the granular aspects of the political system. It’s what makes reform impossible as we are quickly seeing with the opposition to Trump’s policies. It’s not that they object, on policy grounds, to the very mild reforms that are being proposed. What is at issue is the very concept of the all encompassing world state. To permit reform is to permit questioning and that can never be tolerated.

The only way to break the totalitarian stranglehold may be with an authoritarian willing to bust down doors and crack some heads.

I'm of two minds about this. I entirely agree with the Z-man's contention that the 'managerial class' are doing everything they can to frustrate President Trump's agenda. They see it (correctly, IMHO) as a clash between popular will and the so-called 'Deep State', the bureaucrats and politicians who regard the state as superior to, and in authority over, the popular will. That's the antithesis of what our Founding Fathers intended, of course.

However, populism is a two-edged sword. The will of the people first cried "Hosanna!", then turned around and crucified Christ. The will of the people elected Hitler and Mussolini. Too many people are willing to abdicate personal responsibility to someone who says, "Let me handle that for you! I can take care of it!" Too many are willing to let emotions and feelings sway their judgment, rather than rely on facts and logic. That can be very dangerous indeed. It may even destroy the democracy that's supposed to embody and empower the will of the people in the first place.

'Bread and Circuses' is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader – the barbarians enter Rome.

Mine was a lovely world – until the parasites took over.

In a very real sense, it's the 'parasites' who've voted themselves more and more government benefits - by voting for representatives eager to gain power by promising them those benefits - who've thereby put the 'managerial class' in their present position of power. Those parasites are the reason that Republicans are now dithering about 'reforming' or 'fixing' Obamacare, instead of doing what the electorate has overwhelmingly demanded and getting rid of it. They fear what the parasites will do to them, electorally speaking, if deprived of a benefit on which they've come to rely.

The 'managerial class' are past masters at exploiting the parasites. Illegal aliens, welfare queens, those who make a living by decrying racial or sexual or any other form of discrimination (whether or not it truly exists) . . . all of them are the bread and butter of those who seek to rule us. They're also the antithesis of what it means to be a free and independent person, in a free and independent nation.

President Trump is the catalyst who has brought this conflict into public view. He's facing a full-on revolt by those who fear losing power to the populist revolution he embodies. He may succeed in 'draining the swamp', as he promised before the election - but the swamp is full of 'managerial class' crocodiles, all fighting back as hard as they can. There's no guarantee who's going to win. He may have to break the 'managerial class' in order to do so . . . and therein may lie the seeds of the destruction of the republic envisaged by the Founding Fathers.

It's a hell of a dilemma. For America's sake, I hope President Trump wins - but I hope he can do so while preserving 'liberty and justice for all'. That's not guaranteed.

6 comments:

harp1034
said...

I think the only way Trump can do it is to crack some heads and have some people disappear. The powers are there for him to use. was set way before he became president. They just didn't know Trup would be the one to grab the brass ring.The stage

Peter, as much as I like the idea of total libertarianism, The sick, downtrodden and the unlucky just can't be left out in the wind. For that reason a better health plan is wise. In a smaller pool charities and such could handle the less fortunate, my theory is as a society we have become too big and too dispersed to account for all the needy.

In my perfect world, there would be no regulations or litigation ( just punishment for laws and failure) everything would be cheaper including health care. put $hit in in one hand and dreams in the other and see which fills up first though.

You almost said it, but the problem is what Z-man said here: If what it takes to break the stranglehold this cult has on society is a dictator willing to toss a few judges from a helicopter, then sign me up for dictatorship. The problem is you never get freedom back when that sort of cult takes over.

From appearances so far, it could be argued we've replaced one dictator with "a pen and a phone" with another. I'll grant that some of that is necessary, but I'd sure rather see executive orders that say, "Executive Order number XXXXXX is hereby cancelled" with some few instructions if necessary, than the way we seem to be just layering EOs on top of other EOs. The problem is that number of orders tends to infinity and that makes life impossible. I'm sure you know the book "Three Felonies a Day". In the last 8 years it seems the goal was to increase that.

And guess what? The more orders and more regulations, the more power the Deep State has! They're bureaucracy, and they exist to make and enforce, petty, fly paper laws. We should be rescinding laws and regulations by the bushel full, not layering legalese on legalese.

As SiG points out, the flaw is the unelected bureaucracy that is charged with delivering the largesse promised by politicians. Which, in turn, is the failure of elected representatives to Do Their #&*%ing Job; Article1, Section1: All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

Those we have duly elected to represent our interests, and except for the interference of the 17th Amendment, been appointed to represent the interests of their states, have deferred to the bureaucracy for definition and implementation of the vague laws which they have enacted.

The creation of the Deep State was only a matter of time.

The solution - the only solution - is taking power away from the bureaucracy that is reponsible for the Deep State, and that means reducing the size, and hence the authority, of government. This will not be at all easily accomplished, because it's not going to be successful by nibbling around the edges - "changing missions," re-organizing, or any of the other male bovine excrement politicians are so good at, but by wholesale elimination of entire - and large - segments of the federal bureaucracy.

Search the Constitution for "housing" and "mortgage" then explain why we have a department of Housing and Urban Development, plus Sallie Mae, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae buying and selling mortgage instruments, FHA and VA home loans, Farm Bureau mortgages from Agriculture, et al.

A large number of agencies need to be completely abolished, their buildings demolished, their former employees prohibitied from any federal employment or compensation for life. I'd add "and salt the earth where those buildings stood" but salt has nowhere near the length of half-life needed.

That will be exceedingly difficult, and will necessarily take place over a number of years; that kind of long-term committment is not what politicians are known for. The alternative is, at some point, a more forceful resolution by the citizens.

As I recall, we tried that once before and it doesn't seem to have produced the desired outcome, for either side.